My Floating Castle
by Lea Ootori
Summary: Akihiko Kayaba had indeed done an evil thing by developing SAO and trapping the players in it- but every story has two sides. Read the tale of Akihiko's childhood and all the emotional turmoil that ended in Sword Art Online. WARNING: MENTIONS OF ABUSE, SUICIDE, AND OTHER TRIGGERING SUBJECTS! Oneshot.


**So this is a little thing I was thinking about ever since I started watching SAO in the first place back in December of 2014. I finished the entire thing in three days, and at first, I was a bit iffy about Akihiko Kayaba, but in the 14th episode, the way he watched his castle fall apart with that wistful look dissolved any anger I might have had directed at him and I grew to love him as a character even though he really wasn't major after part one of season 1. So I don't want to drop spoilers into your plate before you read it, so please go ahead and I'll ramble more at the bottom.**

 **WARNING: THIS STORY INCLUDES MENTIONS OF ABUSE, DRINKING, SUICIDE, MENTALLY UNSTABLE CHILDREN, DEATH, ACCIDENTS, AND GALORE. SO IF ANY OF THESE AREN'T YOUR CUP OF TEA I UNDERSTAND. BUT PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT EACH OF THESE WARNING ONLY APPLIES TO AROUND 3 SENTENCES IN THE ENTIRE PIECE AND I DO NOT AND I REPEAT DO NNOOOTTTT GO INTO GORY DETAIL- SO PLEASE DON'T LET THIS WARNING SCARE YOU AWAY.**

 **Thanks, and please enjoy!**

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As a child, Akihiko hadn't been interested in computers. He loved math, and he loved logic. He loved the pureness of knowing there was only one right answer. You couldn't argue with pure logic and math.

That's what he loved so much about it.

He spent hours slaving over the math problems he'd created for himself, challenging everybody around him to do the same, until there came a point where nobody could do them anymore.

He'd sit alone, trying to do it himself, while hoping that somebody would come and join him, cure his loneliness.

When he was a bit older, his father and mother enrolled him in math academy. He joined the math clubs, he competed, and he was happy again. He was content. He had company. For he was a fragile child, though he might not show it, Akihiko craved the praise and company of others. It's what kept him going.

But less than a few months after his new, beautiful life full of company and happiness had begun, it all began to go downhill.

His mother got deathly sick. "She'll be fine." the doctor had said. And Akihiko had believed him. He watched as his mother grew frail. "She's got a chance." The doctor said. And again, Akihiko believed him, for he had no choice. His mother choked up blood, passed out from exhaustion, and gaining what looked like fifty years' worth of wrinkles in a few months. "We'll operate on her, and she's gonna be fine." The doctor encouraged him. And Akihiko decided to believe him, for the sake of his mother. And besides, that tiny glimmer of hope was all he had at this point.

He hated doctors and science and medicine and human bodies. How horrible! Not knowing if you'll die or live, not knowing whether your body will ever prevail. Just wondering about this vortex of no definite answer and the questions of the world made him angry. How had the world come this far, survived this long, if they knew that any second, even right as they got married or had their first child or achieved the dream they'd been striving for their whole life, they could just flop over and be dead? Leave the world? Leave everything behind and never finished what you started?

If only there was a way to ensure that you wouldn't die unless you were ready to. Soldiers walked right into battle. They were ready to die.

Was the human race the same way? They came into this world, full of energy and possibility, but everyone knew that they were a ticking time bomb, ready to die?

Did they choose this?

That was ridiculous, young Akihiko decided. Who wants to enter a world without knowing the end of their life for sure? Who doesn't want a definite answer for that question?

But as Akihiko was still a child, he chose not to mention his thoughts to a single person. He decided he was the stupid one, everybody knew the answer to that question. He had to figure it out for himself. He studied reference books. He looked it up in encyclopedias. He searched. He turned it over in his head. He pondered.

It was driving him insane. Every step he took, he now contemplated which direction his death would come from. A tumbling glass vase that would fall over his head maybe? Or a bump in the stairs that would cause him to tumble to his doom? Or maybe even a lightning bolt that would find it convenient to hit his house during a storm. Death, death, death was the only thing he could think of.

The day of his beloved mother's operation finally came.

Before, when his father and Akihiko had begun to visit his mother in the hospital, Akihiko would stick by his side, stand slightly behind him, or even cling to his arm as only an adorable little boy would. But as his father grew restless and tired, his old anger issues and heart problems flared up again.

He'd yell at his son for every little thing he did. He sent Akihiko to therapy for fear of death, until he didn't have any money to do so. He stopped talking to his son entirely some days. Sometimes, he'd just burst and throw something at him. All while his poor mother was dying.

But today, the father and son held hands, clinging onto the hope they had left.

And a few hours of pressured waiting later, the doctor walked out and told him that the process had gone smoothly. His mother had a chance for recovery. Full recovery. He walked in to talk to his mother, glad to see her more like herself and his father feeling much better.

But everyone should know that rainbows don't last forever.

Less than a month after his mother was discharged, she grew depressed. She stopped interacting with friends and family. She spent most of her time holed up in a room. Why? Because she was now so weak she was stuck to a wheel chair. She was beginning to lose her eyesight completely- she was told she could go blind. She had heart problems. She had to be hooked up to machines constantly. She lost her youth, she looked like a grandmother now. She was too weak to do anything on her own. Her husband's anger issues got worse. His heart was in a bad condition. A little push could send him over the edge into yelling at his wife and son, throwing things, and leaving the house with a slam of the door and not coming back until a day and a half later, totally drunk. Her son was a puny, fearful child now. He sat holed up in his room, wishing the screaming to stop.

She couldn't take it anymore. One day she unplugged the machines keeping her alive. She drank something that a human who wanted to live should never drink. But then again, she didn't want to live- the description fit her perfectly.

She passed on, finally free from the burden of life. She was a free soul, once again returned to where she started. She was at peace, but her family was not.

His mother had been an only child. Akihiko stood at his mother's casket, trying to keep his tears contained as his elderly grandmother wept at the foot of her daughter's dead body. His father had been out drunk again. He hadn't even bothered to show up.

His father wasn't working well anymore. He'd gotten fired. They'd been using the money from their savings account to try to get back on their feet, but his mother's death was the final strike, Akihiko knew. The world was merciless. It never left any hope for those who needed it.

Still, they weren't that poor. They moved into a dingy apartment, barely ate anything, didn't buy much. Their relatives were trying to help; they were good people. But even they got sick of Akihiko's father gobbling up their loans with alcohol. They stopped giving money to the man and his son. They were alone in the world. Suddenly, his father became angrier than ever one night.

"It's all your fault!" he'd said. "She died because of you, you ungrateful bastard!" he'd hit young Akihiko without a care to his wellbeing.

Akihiko's fear of death became stronger. But now, it was overcome by the fear of the ruined, twisted man that was once his beloved father.

Each day, he suffered beating and oral torture of screeching and profanity. His self-esteem was gone. He stopped paying attention in school. He didn't even stick with math. Due to not being able to pay for the fancy school and his stooped grades, he got kicked out. He ended up going to the free public school in the end, where it was all like the beginning. But loneliness and depression are two very different things.

He dreamed of a castle, a large, silver castle, floating far, far away in the sky where his mother had gone and where his father could never reach. Because he was so very sure his father would never reach the sky, for he was going to hell. Akihiko dreamed of one day, flying up to this castle, meeting his mother, and living out the beautiful, happy things that he'd never had chance to experience. He had been robbed. He had been robbed of happiness by god himself, he believed.

One night, his father passed out somewhere, along the river of town, and the next thing he knew his head was smashed on a rock.

By the time they'd found him, he was long dead.

Akihiko Kayaba was fourteen. No a legal adult by far. He was put into a foster home, but he never interacted with the little woman who had adopted him. He stayed in his room, and he went to therapy, he came back, and did it all over again.

Every time he when somewhere, he tried to ignore the whispers of, "Did you hear about that poor boy?" and "His father was a drunkard.." and "….and his mother died!... Can you imagine?" that came from every person he ever met. He saw pity. Remorse. Sympathy. He hated it all.

One day, his foster mother, in an attempt to cheer him up, took him out. Akihiko wanted nothing more than to stay home hidden from the world and the gossip and whispers, but he'd given up in the end and followed her there. After all, she had been kind enough to take him in.

He went, and he found something he'd never even dreamed of. A game. While Akihiko wasn't one to usually play games, this one was different. It was a 'MMORPG'. He studied the case of this certain game. "A Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game," the case advertised. 'Wizardry', the game was called.

He couldn't help but ponder at this. He asked his foster mother to buy it for him, and he swore he'd never seen the woman that delighted since she adopted him.

She'd hugged him tightly until Akihiko recovered from the shock and pushed her away. A bit of hurt reflected in her eyes, replaced with a happy spark as she bought the game and smiled all the way home. It seemed she thought she'd made progress. In a way, she had. Though Akihiko didn't feel like telling her that. He was afraid it'd feel like he was replacing his real mother.

So he played. And he played. He bought game after game after game. It was an escape from the world, and it had never felt so good. When he got to the end of high school, he joined the math world once more. He realized that math and computers worked together. Games were made of zeroes and ones. His new favorite numbers. He started coding and learning more about this subject that suddenly had interested him greatly.

The scars on his body left by his father and the scars on his emotional conscience left by his mother didn't matter anymore. He realized he could create a perfect world. A world where everybody would know before they died. A world with no sickness. A world without abuse. A world without pain. A world where god couldn't rob you of things because _he_ would be the god. He'd be a fair one. He'd make everyone happy. It'd be heaven for the living, he decided. Nobody would ever want to leave.

What if they could experience it like it was life though? That would be amazing, he thought. So when he graduated, he went to university. But he didn't participate as much as he'd tried to in his high school year. He worked in labs all around, trying as hard as he could to make something he had dubbed, 'full dive technology'.

His foster mother had never been happier. He didn't call her mother, still. He called her by her first name, like one would call a stepmother. But he didn't think she minded, as long as Akihiko displayed those little sparks of gratitude now and then, which he was careful to remember to do.

It was when he was around twenty-six that he made his breakthrough. He'd made his silver castle. That floated in the sky. And he'd made the 'Full Dive Technology' he'd been striving for. But if was more his castle that he cared about.

He'd been dreaming about the moment his castle would be there from a young age, and more than ten years later, after all his hard work and labor, day and night, here it was. Floating above him in what seemed like a real world. He looked down at his hands, priding his work. He watched a tear fall from his eye and land on his real looking hand. And they kept coming. He finally wiped them away, looking at the beautiful thing he made. The thing _he_ made. Despite everything his father had told him, all the hatred and the hurtful words, he'd done something. He'd done something worth being remembered for.

He'd wiped his tears. It'd been forever since he cried. He hadn't even cried at his mother's funeral. He'd kept it in. And even though he tried to stop, every tear he'd kept in since then came pouring out like a gusher. He mourned for his mother. He mourned for his father. He cried for the years he's suffered the abuse. He cried for the kindness of his foster mother. He mourned for his old life. He cried for what had been stolen from him, he'd been robbed. And then he cried out of joy, for the beautiful thing he'd made.

"Look, mother." He's said. "I made something. I did something. _I_ made this. All by myself. I can't believe it either." He's said softly, all emotion gone from his face once more.

He was happy, for the first time since he could remember. But Akihiko's stars were cursed indeed, when his foster mother passed away of old age.

Everybody had seen it coming. She was an old woman by this point. Nobody was surprised. Except Akihiko.

He'd believed that his mother and father had brought death on themselves. That nobody else would die. But it wasn't true. The next one he'd loved had left him. Why did everybody he loved leave him?

He was angry. He was sorrowful. He was delusional. Why did god want to take away his loved ones? What had he done to suffer like this? Then a chord was struck. What if the people in his game left him the same way? How could he be sure that they wouldn't just turn their back on his and never come back? Fear gripped Akihiko as he continued to work. In his maniac state, he developed features on the game that shouldn't exist, in any game- ever.

The day of the release began smoothly. He watched as the players began to panic. Then he joined them. After all, he created this utopia for himself. There was no point in watching from the outside.

Once he joined the game, he slowly became mentally stable once more. He couldn't think of the reason why he'd done this to everyone. But now he was just a player with a few hacks. He couldn't shut down the game, he realized, unless someone were to find out that he, indeed, was Akihiko. The delirious Akihiko had done that. The delirious Akihiko had set these perimeters, and unless someone found out his identity and challenged him to a one on one fight and won, the game would go as planned, and the game couldn't be cleared unless the 100th floor was beaten.

But as time went on, Akihiko grew comfortable in this world. He went back to being the delirious Akihiko- the one who wanted nothing more than to stay in this Utopia. He loved it here- where he couldn't die, where he could just stay forever and ever. He loved everything about it.

But when the fastest player in the game- the best player in the game, Kirito, discovered his identity that day, he saw something in the boy's eyes.

A fight. A vigor. Strength of the soul. Determination. Things that he never had. Things that he could never acquire, no matter how many games he developed.

After all, Akihiko was truly a scared, scarred little child in the body of a man. Who hid from the world in his little room, immersing himself in games in which death was never permanent or never possible to begin with.

He didn't realize how alike he and the boy were, ironically.

He wished he had all those things that he saw purely in the boy's eyes. He thought, 'If I beat him, maybe I'll be seen like that as well. Maybe I'll _be_ him.' So he challenged him to a fight. Akihiko couldn't lose, he decided.

When he sliced at Kirito, instead hitting Asuna, he was surprised. While he acted like he was amused, inside, he was angry. Would anybody ever love him so?

I don't deserve all that, Akihiko had thought. I'm a coward. A little child that never grew up. He looked around. He was in the castle, in the castle he'd dreamed of his entire life.

He struck at Kirito, who stopped even trying. The boy barely looked up. Akihiko drove his sword through the boy. He suddenly wished he hadn't done it. He watched as the boy exploded into sparkles, the ones he's taken days to color the exact shades of his late mother's eyes. A glowing green.

But as soon as he'd 'died', Kirito had come back, uttering the words, "No. Not yet." A yellow tinged teenage soul drove his own sword through Akihiko, who stood there stunned.

All he could think was a mussed up collection of the terrors of death. He wanted to scream, yell, "NO!", for he couldn't die! And Kirito had died, right? How did he stab him? Why was he dying? But as both men dissolved into sparkles the color of a dead woman's eyes, The game was finally cleared. The announcement rung out. After two full years of turmoil and the thoughts that had ravaged the game, the players finally had an answer to their prayers.

They were saved.

Against all odds, they'd been saved. They woke up in their hospital beds, weak and tired, but nevertheless, happy and relieved.

And above, where Akihiko had created heaven, stood three remaining players, still there, the only ones left in the world.

Akihiko, Asuna, and Kirito.

Akihiko had turned to Kirito. Kirito had asked, "Why? Why would you do this?" but Akihiko had no answer. He'd told the boy about his dream of Aincrad. It hurt his heart to say as much when he saw the castle falling apart right before his eyes. Everything he'd worked for.

But he couldn't say anything else.

He couldn't say he was afraid of everybody leaving him, so devised a way to keep them there. He didn't want to sound like the coward he was.

So instead, he told the boy that he simply didn't remember.

Akihiko was so, very, sure that his body was dying. So he tried, one last, futile attempt, to keep his soul alive. And his body stopped functioning and Asuna and Kiritio left Sword Art Online, Asuna and about 300 other players got snatched up by a certain someone, and Akihiko did the impossible. He converted his entire soul into zeros and ones.

His favorite numbers.

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 **So that is the end of this one shot. I maybe might do some type of follow up to this involving Sugu (points if you can guess how I can involve Sugu in a oneshot like this!) which is something my best friend TheTrueItaly (check out her fanfiction profile- she ROCKS!) have been discussing for a while now... But we never got around to writing because we were busy writing our Ouran High School Host Club/Blue Exorcist/Attack on Titan/My Candy Love/Original story... there's more, I bet, I just can't remember them.. Before I ramble on about my best friend in the world/sister/didi (you'll get this, M'Death, I'm sure you will) and other labels for her that will have you cured from your fangirl insomnia, I will close this one shot and hope it wasn't a complete fail.. That was a realllllyyy long run on sentence...**

 **Anyways, thanks SO MUCH for reading this, I really appreciate it.**

 **Oh, and I also take most requests for one shots, so if you have something in mind, just shoot and I'll get it done. :) Please Review! :)**

 **~Lea Ootori**


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